Medical Humanities rest on a command of language and appreciation
of visual fine arts. Both are expressions of fundamental ideas. The ancestry of ideas in words has
roots in remote times, in a manner similar to the ancestry of genes. Like
genes, words have a family history or pedigree that can be traced. Notably,
biologic and linguistic evolution are intertwined. Ancestral archives of genes
and words contain "archetypes" of ideas that may serve as bridges
with the past and may explain modern realities. The survival of archetypes
against oblivion reflects qualities of utility, fitness, beauty or at least
elegance. The charm of many "word ideas" had a grip on the imagination
of many saints, poets, and politicians who used them to inflame the imagination
of followers. Liberty, Justice, Happiness, Oblivion, Mother, Nation are
"word ideas" that have fostered dreams and engendered nightmares. Inevitably,
as human leaders and dictators exploit "word ideas" to frame new odysseys,
meanings may evolve, become deformed, be replaced or die.

Likewise, the illustrated overviews underscore ideas and their pedigree.
Visual fine arts are also a repository of ideas that influence
the sense in words. An emphatic effort was made to expand the search beyond
the views present in English to include elements from other languages,
existing and extinct. Also, the vagaries of spelling and other constraints
of interest to linguists were discounted to enhance the sharpness of "word
idea" images. To further configure "word ideas", roots and origins from Mythology,
Literature, Poetry, History, Politics, Biology, Genetics, Medicine and
other sources were scrutinized. Expressed in formal terms, this compilation
seeks to emphasize the lemma of our lexicon drawn from beyond the limits
of English. The alphabetic arrangement of Pandora's Word Box implies it
is a online dictionary; a reliance on mythology, poetry and other sources of beauty
bespeaks of an anthology; the extent of many entries and allusions to personalities
suggests a cyclopedia and encyclopedia; the exploration for common roots
in various languages suggests a polyglot approach, examination of phonetic
similarities implies an emphasis on etymology and the analysis of similarities
of ideas found in words lacking phonetic similarities suggests an emphasis
on semiotics. For such reasons, Pandora's Word Box could be called a Polyglot
Glossary or Dictionary, Encyclopedia, Anthology, Etymology and Semiotics. Many ideas gain grit when illustrated with images of classic sculptures and
paintings.